Yet Another Harris Hookup Disaster
by Manchester
Summary: Begins the series 'The Underwear Chronicles.' In 'The Zeppo', Xander Harris has his one-night stand with Faith, culminating with the Slayer throwing him out of her hotel room while the teenager is clad only in his underwear. That was just the beginning.
1. Sally Solomon

Wincing as shockwaves of cold raced up his legs from the bottoms of his bare feet, Xander Harris continued hopping along the icy lawn, away from the house, while pulling on his pants and muttering under his breath, "All I did was to get lost in a snowstorm and stop off to ask for directions! I wasn't expecting to be yanked inside her house and involved in someone's fantasy of 'repopulating the world after a natural disaster!' At least when Anya and I did that, we came up with a good reason such as an asteroid strike or Captain Trips, not something so ordinary like a couple of inches of snow! Geez, from the way she carried on and threw me out after I told her about that, you'd think she was from another planet!"


	2. Marie D'Ancanto

Straightening up from tying his shoes, Xander viciously kicked the object lying on the floor, glowering as this bedsheet fluttered away down the hotel corridor, while he jabbed back his elbow to hit the elevator button. Scolding himself, he grumbled, "You really should have paid attention to the advice of 'Never sleep with somebody crazier than you!' A condom, absolutely, a dental dam, okay, but being told to wrap myself completely in a sheet and using the pair of gloves she handed to me, just to give her an erotic massage? Well, if that had lead to something more, that would have been great, except for her going totally nutso after seeing that tiny little fingertip hole in the gloves!"

As the elevator doors opened, a very cranky Xander due to the fiasco of this evening's one-night stand turned to enter, stopping short at seeing inside the elevator a short guy in a white t-shirt and jeans, not to mention a hairstyle that looked like he'd used a wind tunnel to shape it. However, all this paled to that guy's truly homicidal expression, as he snarled at a now-dumbfounded Xander, "I can smell her on you!" At that point, the interloper clenched his fists dangling at his sides.

SNIKT!


	3. Princess Fiona

Limping slightly down the deserted palace corridor in his boxers, Xander shifted the rest of his clothes in his arms, to allow his now-freed right arm to reach behind himself to rub his aching ass. As he tried to get some relief from the angry kick that had propelled him out of someone's bedroom, an indignant man quietly complained under his breath, "Like it was my fault I missed dinner when she invited me to her chambers! I was totally fine with the transformation, but she just _had _to be reassured, demanding a compliment right away, and making me say the first thing that came to mind! Honestly, what was so bad about telling her she looked great, exactly as appetizing as a bowl of tortilla chips and a guacamole dip?"


	4. An Unseen Presence

Crawling out of the snowdrift he'd managed a reasonably soft landing upon, Xander got to his feet, and brushing himself off before he wrapped his bare arms around his equally-exposed chest, the Sunnydale native started to shiver from the biting cold of the Colorado winter. Still, even though he was totally naked except for his Christmas gift last month from Dawn, who'd managed to cause everyone around the tree to whoop with laughter at her present of white silk underwear with the words stitched in black thread on the back of these boxers of 'HOSTESS NO. 1 FAN', Xander was too fascinated at what he was watching to pay all that much attention to the extreme chill of the January night.

As the entire massive structure before him collapsed with a mighty roar of destruction, Xander smirked through his chattering teeth at what he'd done, even though it had also resulted in an absolutely unique outcome in his life of being ejected from hotel rooms. He'd been thrown out, shoved, kicked, heaved, flung, and otherwise banished by various individuals from these commercial lodging establishments, but he'd never before gone through what had just occurred.

Several moments ago, Xander Harris had been upchucked.

Sniggering to himself as he started hopping up and down while shaking his entire upper torso from side to side, all in a hopeful attempt at keeping his blood from freezing solid, the former Sunnydale native cackled over the crunching noises of the hotel debris settling into that structure's basement, "Got to really thank Wils for providing her extra-large spray can of Demon-Dispel Charm that worked like the biggest bug bomb ever."

Feeling his bare toes beginning to turn numb, Xander became a bit more serious, as he also muttered to himself, "Good thing that writer and his family got someplace else to go due to the Council's influence, or something really nasty would have definitely happened to them." Peering through the flakes of snow that were beginning to fall, Xander patiently waited for the next event that was due to occur.

A sharp 'crack!' came from somewhere in the mound of debris that was all that remained of a cursed hotel, as Willow's final spell discharged. This noise was promptly followed by another sound, that of a tremendous 'whoosh!' as every bit of century-old wood that made up the tinder-dry walls, ceilings, floors, support beams, and roof ignited, launching an enormous fireball a hundred feet up into the air and sending a wave of scorching heat past Xander, who merely grinned and held out his arms, luxuriating in the warmth as the snow beneath his feet melted.

As the flames now cleansing every bit of malignancy from what had been the breeding ground of a demonic entity's foul malevolence subsided slightly from their first overpowering height, to instead start their steady consuming of every scrap of debris of a building that had previously covered acres of land, Xander strolled closer towards the vast blaze, holding out his palms, until he'd come as near as it was comfortable to the fires. The man now started to good-naturedly turn his body in a complete circle, making sure that all of himself got the full benefit of the heat. Xander knew the warmth would last until morning, when he could finally look for his snow-covered car in the hotel parking lot and get a new set of clothes from his luggage in the trunk.

After a couple of rotations, an evil grin suddenly appeared upon Xander's face, as he abruptly stopped with his back to the fires, to then grab the waistband of his boxers, and then the man yanked down his underwear to his knees, while at the same time he bent over to moon the now-destroyed demon of the Overlook Hotel.


	5. Gabrielle

Holding on like grim death to the wooden post of the balcony railing, as this upright frame part creaked ominously, Xander Harris determinedly ignored the faint breeze that was causing goose-bumps over his nearly-naked body that was wearing only a loincloth, and he also took no notice of the raucous guffaws coming from the tavern loiterers looking upwards from the dung-strewn courtyard two stories below.

For the umpteenth time since he'd been accidentally sent to this primitive dimension due to Willow's wonky attempt to give him a nice vacation, Xander managed to control his temper, and he addressed in a level tone the young blond woman worriedly peering over the balcony he was dangling from.

"Look, honey, I know you just wanted to show me what your friend Zena, or whatever her name is, taught you, but it wasn't a good idea to do a standing triple somersault onto our bed, since that caused a springboard effect that tossed me out of the room and over this balcony. Now, could you give me a hand up?"

Nodding eagerly, Gabrielle leaned over the railing, her arms reaching down for Xander to attempt to grab her hands to be pulled up. Shifting his grip, the man started to let go of the post to reach out with his right hand, and faster than either could react, this wooden support chose that exact moment to break free.

Still clutching the wood post, a plummeting Xander watched Gabrielle's horrified face starting to diminish, as each person moved further apart from the other. Frantically twisting his body around to look downwards at his landing spot now being hastily evacuated by the previously-amused onlookers, Xander then instantly realized this was a truly special good news/bad news moment in his life.

Good news: He was going to land right in the middle of the biggest, softest manure pile in the courtyard.

Bad news: He was going to land right in the middle of the biggest, softest manure pile in the courtyard.


	6. Minerva McGonagall

Cautiously edging past the closed, enormous double doors, Xander mused that maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to go on a walking tour of Scotland. He'd wandered into a backwater town that had been having some kind of Renaissance Faire festival, with everyone in robes, managing to find a pub that had really good whisky and a waitress his age with a gravity-defying chest that could have supported a pair of full beer mugs being rested upon these magnificent breasts. After taking a cheerfully-alcoholic stroll with said barmaid to a real-life castle and spending the entire night showing her that the last part of her job description was no longer true, a hung-over Xander had woken up in their bed that morning, next to a flannel nightgown-wearing, grey-haired woman that was undoubtedly her mother. Or more likely, her grandmother.

Frankly, at that moment, the man from a destroyed California town had the perfect right to scream like a little girl.

Over the next few minutes, during his frantic search for his clothes and an equally frantic explanation, Xander had listened with only half an ear to, "…occasional fling…polyjuice…her permission…sent them back before sunrise…never been so exhausted that I overslept…"

Looking up at the sudden silence then in the bedroom, after finally finding his other sock, Xander had stared in utter disbelief at the elderly woman in her nightgown giving him a coy glance. That supremely awkward moment had ended in an embarrassed whirlwind of activity that had finished with him being shoved out of her apartment into a bare stone hallway while carrying his clothes that he hadn't been given time to don, hurried directions on how to exit the castle, stern warnings to avoid being seen by anyone, and before the apartment door had slammed shut, a farewell squeeze of his right buttock through his boxers that had undoubtedly left a permanent impression of bony fingers there.

As he'd tiptoed through the castle corridors, Xander felt his current mood quickly fluctuate from being smug about actually shagging his partner into an ecstatic collapse, to instead contemplating finding a nice quiet corner to throw up, considering exactly with whom he'd jointly accomplished this sexual triumph.

These seriously mixed feelings contributed to him at once getting lost, and those moving staircases didn't help at all (what kind of kids' school had something so dangerous?). Not to mention dodging these same students and staff, avoiding several ghosts, and trying to ignore the occasional wolf-whistle from the portraits lining the castle walls. The latter was probably due to the fact that in all his searching for the exit, an underwear-clad Xander simply didn't have the time or opportunity to put back on the rest of his clothes.

Still, a now very grouchy and nearly naked American finally had his mood brighten, when he'd at last found the way out, past those big doors behind him, and he picked up his barefoot pace, his gaze held at eye-level and directed at his welcome freedom, and then Xander managed to unerringly step right on a sleeping cat's tail.

As Mrs. Norris yowled fit to raise the dead and took off in a blurring streak further away, deeper into Hogwarts, a frantic Xander then scuttled around in his crouch, picking up from the floor his clothes that had gone flying upwards from his arms in his panicked leap. While reaching out to grab his left boot, the still-squatting man froze, as he now felt the slightest breeze on his bare back, and he heard a room's conversation abruptly stop.

Slowly bending over to peer between his legs, Xander saw behind himself through the now-open double doors what looked in his current view to be an entire upside-down school of children and their teachers sitting at their breakfast, all staring at him, while at the far end of the room, there was a surprised Gandalf-type dude, his last night's conquest putting her hands over her eyes, and a pasty-faced man with greasy hair looking as if he was about to self-combust.

There was only one thing Alexander LaVelle Harris could possibly say to those people at this exact moment.

"Candygram for Mongo?"


	7. Princess Leia

Maybe he wouldn't kill Andrew, after all.

As he stood there in his underwear, Xander grinned at the beautiful, nude young woman who'd stripped off her own soaked white dress and who was now giving him a come-hither look. This sure as hell made up for that nerd's accidental wish for the one-eyed man to join in the action on the tv screen in a really different scene than Lucas had filmed thirty years ago.

At that moment, an impatient Chewbacca, searching for the pair who'd gone off on their own to get dry after they'd escaped from the trash compactor, then poked his damp head through the doorway of the supply room of the Death Star, and he vigorously shook his whole body, sending drops of filthy water flying throughout the entire space, and right after, a gagging Xander and Leia, both holding their noses, frantically dashed away from each other into opposite directions out of the room's other exits.

Nothing smells worse than a wet Wookiee.


	8. Zatanna Zatara

*Don't trip, and don't smile.*

As he stepped forward, Xander kept his face calm, which was rather difficult, considering his current situation and the emotions resulting from his abrupt teleportation to here. These feelings didn't include embarrassment, since a specific ladies' club in Oxnard several years ago had permanently burned _that_ away. No, what he was experiencing was basically bemusement, on exactly why he was at this particular location. Actually, Xander was more puzzled about being here, because he did know why.

He'd breathed at the wrong moment.

A few moments ago, following that unforgivable act, a pair of red-rimmed eyes had shifted and narrowed to send him a truly vicious look, as his suffering girlfriend huddled in her fluffy bathrobe across from him at their breakfast table, and before he could offer to give her another backrub in hopes of alleviating her PMS symptoms, she'd snarled, "Detaicerppa yllaer er'ouy erehw og."

Xander Harris gravely stalked down the catwalk, to then stop and pose for a few moments at the end of this raised platform, to the accompaniment of the hushed, confused silence of a crowd of New Yorkers at this year's fashion week, who had no idea why a parade of male models in formal suits had just been interrupted by a man walking in his underwear, with this particular item of clothing being embroidered with a dozen pale-yellow rectangular cylinders.

Instinctively sensing this was something that absolutely needed to be caught on film, every photographer and cameraman there now took aim and pressed their camera switches, immortalizing Xander and his Twinkie boxers.

As that man with a perfect deadpan nodded to the crowd beginning to murmur in disbelief, Xander now sharply turned, and headed back up the catwalk, already planning on how to get out of there and back to his apartment thirty blocks away that he was presently sharing with Zatanna, all while still in his skivvies. *Piece of cake, dude*, Xander inwardly shrugged, even when he saw the security guards beginning to cluster at the back end of the catwalk stage.

Much later, one of the Slayers who'd had the fortunate timing of TiVoing that specific fashion show could pretty much name her price to allow the other warrior women to watch the beginning of this year's style craze of the 'Real Male', all started when people watched a genuine hero who'd been the same room with other men much more handsome and with sleeker bodies, and witnessed for themselves the difference between a show poodle and a timber wolf.


	9. Duchess Gloriana XIV

As he carefully made his way down the grand staircase into the darkness of the ground floor, Xander wryly shook his head. He'd reluctantly left his warm bed a minute ago, and he was looking forward to getting this over with and reporting back to his royal bedmate that there was nothing to worry about.

The man came to the foot of the landing, and he listened to the absolute silence of a tiny castle in an equally tiny kingdom that had been overlooked by everyone during all of Europe's wars, revolutions, and other societal upheavals of the last few centuries. Undoubtedly because any potential invaders had simply gotten totally lost while trying to find the couple of acres the proud inhabitants of Grand Fenwick (all one hundred and twenty-four of them) called their home, with an ensuing absolute lack of success in annexing this minuscule realm into their own territory.

"Probably somebody from the next country over who wanted to borrow a cup of sugar," snarked the drowsy man. Still, what a duchess wanted was what a duchess got, even if she'd insisted there had been a noise from downstairs, and had ruthlessly sent Xander from their bed to find out what it was. The emissary from the New Council, who'd perhaps exceeded his orders by the merest trifle to develop a working relationship with the owner of some of the rarest magical grimoires in the entire continent, now yawned, and he wandered off towards the front door.

As he'd expected, there was nobody there, and while sleepily striding down the castle hallway and scratching his ass through his old-fashioned, ankle-length, white nightshirt, while passing by his reflection in the large wall mirror also performing this loutish action, Xander headed back towards the stairs, flicking the tassel of his nightcap to the back of his head, as the man now developed an optimistic gleam in his eye. Maybe when he rejoined Gloriana in their bed, they could play another game of the beautiful partisan and the aw-shucks GI Joe-

Freezing in the middle of both his thoughts and taking a step, Xander slowly lowered his right foot in its white sock, as he stood there for a moment, to then carefully starting to back up in the hallway, until he was once more in front of the mirror, turning to study his reflection looking back at himself. There seemed to be no cause for alarm, until Xander now meditatively considered two things:

First, only a few hours ago, there hadn't been any mirror at all in that specific location of the hallway. Just a doorless entryway into that room there now shadowed in darkness.

Second, the perhaps-reflection, in his matching outfit of white nightshirt, nightcap, and socks, also possessed the totally identical features of Xander Harris, save for a thick, black greasepaint mustache that was slathered across this duplicate's upper lip.

The man from Sunnydale now clasped his hands, and contemplatively cracked his knuckles, with all these actions perfectly imitated by whoever - or whatever - was across from him.

*Okay, buster, you're going up against someone who's seen 'Duck Soup' dozens of times. Let's get it on.*

* * *

Author's Note: The Buffyverse version of Grand Fenwick is much smaller and it never went through the events of Leonard Wibberley's novels. It still has very good wine, though.


	10. Mary Batson

The irate man with the eyepatch, carrying his outer clothes in his arms and trailing after himself a faint but distinct smoke-cloud of burnt hair and scorched cotton, was darkly muttering to himself under his breath as he hobbled down the hotel corridor, "Proof of age - her driver's license checked out; having a secret identity - who cared, I was under the impression we were about to have an entirely different kind of team-up; shouting someone's name or other inappropriate comment at exactly the wrong moment - hey, I got used to Anya's announcing the start of her multiple orgasms by yelling 'KILL DE WABBIT!' in a dead-on Elmer Fudd impression; but I just had to draw the line at that last thing, 'cause there might have been times in the past when I'd have enjoyed being hit by a lightning bolt, but not right then and there!"


	11. Anita Blake

Peering out from the front door held half-open, Xander scanned the nearly deserted parking lot of the bowling alley. At this time of the night, a few minutes past the wolf hour, it was absolutely dark and quiet, with only two cars located in the middle of the lot, his and Anita's. Breathing a faint sigh of relief through what he had in his mouth, the nude man gingerly eased himself outside, to then hastily juggle his burden as he barely managed to grab the closing door with his free left hand to keep the door from swinging noisily shut, knowing there would be truly unfortunate consequences if someone had heard the sound of his departure through their deep slumber.

Stepping off the front sidewalk of the bowling alley onto the gravel surface of the parking lot, Xander continually mumbled, "Ow! Ow! Ow!" through his wallet and car keys clenched in his teeth, as his bare feet painfully came down onto the jagged pebbles and bigger rocks during his rapid scuttling towards his car. The reason for keeping in his mouth his sole personal possessions that he'd managed to sneak from the pile of clothes - both his and hers - that Anita was taking her nap upon, was that his hands were currently busy holding in front of his groin the bowling ball that was at this moment shielding his modesty from the entire world.

Xander knew that however ludicrous his actions seemed, they were absolutely necessary, considering how things had usually turned out for the worse for him during his entire life. If he'd just walked outside while otherwise being totally naked, he'd have surely been caught halfway to his car by a school bus turning into the parking lot, with that vehicle holding a lost Brownie troop stopping off to ask for directions from the bare-assed man illuminated in the bus headlights and glumly hearing a dozen young girls shrieking with laughter at the top of their lungs at him.

With the only bit of luck so far for him tonight, he managed to get to his car without any trouble, thankfully dropping the bowling ball to the ground with a soft, crunching thud, and then eagerly using his keys to open the door and get inside, with his underwear-lacking butt rubbing against the seat cushion while he started the car. It took all of his self-control to not peel rubber and spray gravel out of the parking lot, but instead Xander slowly and cautiously drove away, leaving behind with another sigh of relief the bowling alley that Anita had suggested for their late-night date, saying she knew the owner and they'd be able to get inside and play a few games, even if it was closed.

Within this building, a faint frown appeared on the face of the small, sleeping woman, as she vaguely heard through her doze a car leaving. Much later, when she woke up to find herself alone in the bowling alley, this expression would change to a visage of absolute fury at being abandoned by her date, with these enraged feelings becoming a permanent part of her personality, leaving Anita Blake with an enduring grudge against the whole world that was sublimated into punishing anyone who then crossed her path, by either bullying them or giving them a vengeance-fuck.

If a very cheerful Xander, now several miles away and planning at the first safe opportunity - at the next county, say - of stopping somewhere isolated to get another change of clothes from his luggage in the back of the car, had been informed of the future results of what he'd just done to that young woman, the New Council employee would've just shrugged and pointed out that he'd been totally justified in dumping Anita.

No amount of sex, either by quality or quantity, made up for having to tolerate a bad loser. She'd been even worse than Buffy back in Sunnydale being defeated at Scrabble. During their game of strip-bowling tonight, Anita had turned mean-spirited right after losing her first and only article of clothing, her left high-heeled shoe, and then she'd ruthlessly cheated throughout the remaining frames. To top it all off, the Southerner had then been an equally nasty bad winner, with that smug woman thinking her victory had given her leave to then absolutely control all what had next taken place between herself and an increasingly disenchanted Xander.

She hadn't even thanked him for pleasuring her.

So, no, he didn't feel the slightest bit guilty for running out on Anita Blake. Honestly, regarding a necromancer who so brazenly moved the zombies standing in for the pins, just so they'd be sure to be in the path of her bowling ball rolling down the alley, to then get knocked over in a perfect strike and build up her game score, Xander was absolutely positive she could most definitely find someone, anyone else but him to sleep with her. The poor bastard(s).

* * *

Author's Note: This story came from playing a very funny game called 'Zombie BowlORama' on my computer, and then I realized that Anita Blake would have been undefeatable at the real thing in those novels involving that character. Moreover, she would've been willing to boast about it and otherwise rub people's faces into her victories. Yeah, I don't like her or those books at all, so this is probably the only story I'll ever write about that supposedly (shudder) 'heroine' taking place sometime…oh, who cares?


	12. Nyota Uhura

The magic circle flashed, as Xander Harris then materialized in the middle of this geometric figure, dressed in only a single item of clothing, and holding his head, all while screaming a deafening "AAAARRRGGGHHH!" of pure sexual frustration.

From where she'd taken only a few steps away, Willow stopped short, and spun around to stare in astonishment at the mystical ring set in the floor of her workshop. It hadn't been even a minute since she'd sent her friend off on his one-time visit to another reality during his attempt to end his months-long relationship drought, that had ended up with a glum Xander confiding to Willow he was actually sizing up Andrew. That horrific disclosure had caused the red-haired witch to hastily create through her magic an opportunity for Xander to travel to another dimension holding the real-life cast of her fellow Sunnydale native's favorite tv series. He would appear there without any notice taken of his surprise visit, accepted as part of the cast (though not as one of the stars), and in a relationship with one of the female personnel. Unfortunately, he'd have only one hour there with his lover, but surely that would be enough time for her yellow-crayon friend to, er, make with the cuddles and smooches?

Blurting out at Xander still inside the magical circle, Willow yelped, "Xan, what happened? You were there only for a couple of seconds!"

The man let his arms fall from being wrapped around his head, to dangle at his sides, as a now-morose Xander showed off to a shocked witch his large, still-swelling goose egg right in the center of his forehead. He groaned to his disbelieving bestest bud, "Yeah, I appeared right in her bedroom, and she was waiting for me, lying on her back and totally bare, down to only her chocolate skin-"

"Ah-hem!" Willow loudly cleared her throat, feeling a blush rising up in her face, as she stared at the thwarted man clad only in his underwear. The Wicca managed to cautiously continue, "Can we get back to what actually went wrong?"

Gritting his teeth as he rubbed the painful lump on his head, Xander glared at Willow, and growled, "Okay, if you must know! I was taking - well, ripping - off my clothes and throwing them around the bedroom, until I was down to this-" He gestured at his 26th century underwear, and grumpily went on, "-right up to the point where I was just a few steps from the bed, until I tripped over a tribble! I went right down, and the last thing I remember was the edge of the bed coming right at my head! And it's all the fault of THIS!" The last word was bellowed, as Xander once again pointed at what was covering his lower body.

Willow just stared in total bafflement at Xander's bright red underwear, until she realized with utter horror that the Enterprise's security personnel, those red-shirted guys who got killed off at the slightest opportunity, must have had their underthings match their outer apparel.


	13. Murphy Brown

Murphy Brown stormed out of the elevator into the newsroom, in a remarkably vile mood, even for her. This morning alone, their carpool had gotten stuck in traffic, and during that delay, Frank had insisted on keeping the radio dialed to a specific station to wait for his dedication of a song for his current girlfriend. That wouldn't have been so bad, except the radio station had been in the middle of broadcasting a Barry Manilow retrospective, a singer that world-famous newswoman regarded with total loathing.

Not to mention that a few minutes ago, a meeting with the upper management had ended with them refusing to support her seventeenth attempt in getting back into the White House press corps. Like it was totally her fault for being banned as a result of asking the President so many prying questions during the briefings that these shouted inquiries had resulted in an actual ulcer for the Chief Executive.

To top it all off, the office pool had evidently sent her yet another new secretary, and she was going to be forced to break him in before that young man at his desk now watching her approach, with an alarmed look in his eyes, could be considered any use at all. On second thought, maybe she'd simply skip everything else and just break him.

Stopping by the desk, Murphy yanked out a sheaf of papers from her purse and slapped these down onto the desktop, all while barking out her orders, "File these, find out what's the most profitable export from Burkina Faso, track down the Assistant to the Assistant to the Assistant of the Undersecretary of the Interior and tell him to get back to me, and then bring me a large coffee, black, two sugars!"

Murphy then strode off to her office behind the secretary's desk, slamming shut the door behind her, as the newsroom came back to life from that female's overpowering entrance, with most of the other men and women there, before they went back to their own jobs, then sending sympathetic looks towards the formally-dressed man sitting at the desk and currently having a very relieved expression on his own face.

Actually, Xander was more thankful over the fact that the glamour charm set on the silver bracelet around his left wrist was working just fine, considering what he was really wearing at this exact moment. Or, to be more precise, what he _wasn't _wearing.

The fire-breathing Heggluff demon he'd been fighting a few minutes ago had managed to burn off most of his clothing during their battle, before he'd managed to hack through the enchanted torc that fiend had worn around its neck, disrupting the magic that had bound the demon to this dimension, and ending its life. Unfortunately, there'd been a bit of a mystical backlash, creating a portal that had sent him to, well, here. Wherever and whenever that was.

Still, Willow's charm was working like a, gosh, charm. The magical camouflage produced by this crystal ornament set in the bracelet was evidently succeeding in causing everyone in the room to take for granted both him and his sudden appearance here from thin air, and it was also successfully making them think he was dressed properly for this location and his job. Which seemed, at this moment, to be a secretary for someone who could undoubtedly make General George Patton cry like a little girl.

Xander gave one last glance at the bauble on his wrist, which was merrily glowing as if Willow hadn't ever warned him that a true perceiver would be able to look right through the glamour, plus while the crystal could withstand some rough handling, it was extremely sensitive to acoustic vibrations. The Sunnydale survivor mentally nodded to himself, as he eased himself out of his seat, and reached to pick up what he'd formerly placed on the desk, as the man then took a few steps away, while thinking, *Gotcha, time to sneak out of here and get in touch with Wils, before I run across someone with the Sight, not to mention avoiding loud noises-*

With a whoosh!, the office door behind Xander was flung open, just right before Murphy Brown bellowed to him at the top of her lungs, from her workplace containing the dozen Emmys that female journalist had won for her investigative reports, "AND PUT ON SOME FREAKIN' PANTS, ALREADY!" with the door once more slamming shut, this time with a thunderous BANG! that rattled every coffee cup on all the desks in the whole newsroom.

Xander didn't need the fragments of the shattered crystal pattering onto the tops of his bare feet to know that disaster had just struck, when he merely had to look at everyone else there in the room now staring in absolute shock at the nearly naked young man with the eyepatch and dressed solely in his underwear of scorched boxers, while holding a bare broadsword in his right hand, and giving them all a very sickly grin.

* * *

Author's Note: That show had a classic running gag of giving Murphy new secretaries every episode or so, with these office workers being the most absurd and incongruous individuals possible. My own personal favorite was the woman who was running a phone-sex business from her desk, and after catching her at it in the middle of a call, Murphy grabbed the phone away from the other woman, and started sarcastically continuing the sexual compliments, only to stop short after just a few more words, to then hand back the phone to the sheepish secretary, with a terse comment of, "Typical."

Xander Harris would have fit in just fine.


	14. Polly Sherman

Rubbing the bruised knuckles on his right hand, Xander glowered at the unconscious man with the unfortunate mustache lying flat on his back in the middle of the hotel room floor. There was just enough room for the two men there, now that Polly had sensibly made herself scarce, and also due to those items crowding the space being heaped on top of the bed and the drawers, and shoved into the room corners.

Xander had no idea what exactly had set off that man he'd just decked, since the New Council troubleshooter wasn't sure what the hotel manager had first seen when that jerk had barged into here, but, dammit, if only he'd just _listened_ instead of starting his rant right away, the guy wouldn't be nursing a sore jaw for the next couple of days.

It was true that Xander's provided explanation for everything would have been really complicated, and the timeframe of the described events would, to be honest, have also involved the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol. Still, in the end, a fairly reasonable and satisfactory account would have indeed been delivered by Xander on exactly why the hotel room now held, among other things, a live parrot, a penny-farthing bicycle, a tuba, and a Father Christmas costume.

He would've even been able to explain why both he and Polly had been dressed only in their underwear.

The man currently clad in his boxers now sighed, and then he glared again at the man on the floor, as that idiot started a stentorian snore. Xander _might _have been able to restrain himself, if that guy hadn't jumped to the wrong conclusions right away. On the other hand, maybe not. The Sunnydale survivor had already been somewhat surly over the news that had been kindly but firmly delivered by Polly that basically, Xander wasn't gonna get lucky tonight, or maybe ever, even if they were in the proper outfits for some unexpected hanky-panky.

So, when Mr. Big Mouth had started yelling about "a bloody colonial sullying the hard-earned reputation of this fine establishment," the American had been more than willing to swing his fist, hard.

Muttering in exasperation, the one-eyed man bent down to grab the hotel manager's ankles, and then Xander straightened up, as he began to drag his out-cold burden backwards, through the open door of his room into the hotel hallway. Along the way, Xander started contemplating to himself over what the guy he was manhandling had said just before being clobbered. Frankly, that had to be the most untruthful thing the California native had ever heard from someone who wasn't a politician.

Honestly, whatever Basil Fawlty had thought, Xander Harris was absolutely positive that this place was the crummiest hotel he'd ever visited.


	15. Mother

With the sound of shrieking violins in their brain, the butcher knife was held ready, and a hand went out to grab the shower curtain, where behind this bathroom accessory, a shadowy form was showing off her vile, disgusting curves. In the next moment, the plastic sheeting was yanked away, and someone lunged forward, with the knife then being viciously thrust to plunge deep into the slender, feminine back of the woman standing in the tub under the showerhead.

The knifeblade snapped with a _crack! _easily heard over the rushing water of the shower the instant the point of this weapon came in contact with the woman's skin.

Frozen in shock, the figure standing outside the tub watched in absolute disbelief as the body of the woman who'd just been attacked now shimmered, to change into an entirely different form, that of a man's broad, muscular back. This new person, also dripping wet, now slowly turned around, to reveal male features twisted in an expression of extreme disgust that caused the soaked eyepatch covering the left eye to wrinkle into folds. That was all that was noticed by Norman Bates, as a very fast-moving fist now crashed into his jaw, lifting him off his feet from the bathroom floor, and throwing him back so that his wig-covered head smashed into the door, with this psycho's unconscious body dropping limply to the floor.

Flexing his hand, Xander approvingly noted, "Got to tell Wils that her magical force field also works great in supplying invisible brass knuckles." Chuckling, the man turned around to shut off the shower, and this motion then caused him to look down, as wet cloth uncomfortably rubbed against certain things lower on his body. "I think I'll pass on telling her I kept my skivvies on," sheepishly muttered Xander to himself, "but I wasn't gonna go starkers anywhere around that weirdo."

A very nasty look was then sent to the man lying on the floor, as Xander regarded him with increasing loathing. After tracking down the last known location of a baby Slayer's missing aunt, Xander had paid a visit to a certain motel court with a very gloomy house located up on the hill from this lodging place. A casual visit to this residence and a very edgy talk with the householder had set off at full blast all of Xander's Sunnydale instincts, so he'd nonchalantly taken his leave, to then call a red-haired witch and asking to be magically Fed-Exed a few little items. The next day, a beautiful, single woman who'd paid for a night at the motel had offhandedly informed the desk manager that nobody knew where she was and nobody was expecting her anytime soon.

A look of revulsion on his face, Xander now contemplated what was undoubtedly in that house, and how he'd be forced to hand this nutcase over to the authorities despite what that guy had surely done to innocent women. Of course, if Mr. Bates ever told anyone exactly what had happened in the bathroom tonight, he'd only lengthen his stay in the local insane asylum. Still, Xander grumbled to himself, "I'd have rather it was an actual demon instead of just a crazy human, so I could have the pleasure of showing him what it's like to fight someone who can fight back."


	16. Jennifer Walters

"I'M NOT GOING OUT THERE!"

"It's not like you have a choice, Xander. When an alien spacecraft made from force fields drops right in Times Square, it's going to be surrounded by the media. Plus, this thing will completely disappear in the next couple of minutes."

"About that, what's it with you and the Avengers, that you always get 'alien spacecraft made from force fields?'"

"What's it with _your _group, with the 'next Tuesday's apocalypse', 'tormented romance between a vampire and a Slayer', and 'let's see how many spitballs we can bounce off Andrew's forehead before he starts crying?'"

"I see you've met him."

"Yeah, does that guy have some sort of mutant power that makes him totally annoying? I wasn't around him two minutes before I had the urge to channel my cousin and go, 'SHE-HULK SMASH!'"

"It's been suggested. Now, can we get back to my problem? I don't wanna show my bare butt and everything else to the entire world!"

"Look, Xander, we just saved humanity from an alien invasion, and all it took was every scrap of your clothes. I'm sure the people out there will cut you some slack and point away their cameras… Okay, okay, stop giving me that look."

"You're a lawyer, and you still have that optimistic outlook about the human race? Get real. Besides, every tourist out there has a camera in their phone, and all it'll take is two seconds for me to show up on YouTube!"

"Well, what else can we do? There isn't anything at all here for me to rip off and twist into some kind of shorts for you."

"You could just jump away right when the force fields disappear and carry me-"

"Do you have any idea at all about basic physics? I've got serious G-forces at the starts and stops of my jumps! It'd be like putting an uncooked egg in its shell on a overpowered drag-racer's seat and expecting it to stay in one piece during that car's race! Besides, how exactly am I going to carry you, and by what?"

"Okay, let's try this. You shrink back to your human form and that'll cause your uniform to stay baggy enough so that we can both wear it-"

"Aside from all the other objections that I don't even want to say, that won't work either. When I'm Jennifer Walters instead of She-Hulk, my costume is under my clothes as my underwear. It's only when I transform that my outfit shifts into what I'm wearing now."

"Can't you rip off a shirtsleeve or something? I'll make it fit, I promise you!"

"This thing's made of unstable molecules and it's a personal gift from Reed so that it'll survive anything I can! I'm not even sure that Bruce at his angriest could rip it! So, no, that won't- Hmmm…"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"…?"

"Yeah, that familiar evil feminine expression that says, 'We're gonna make life really horrible for sweet, innocent, best-guy-ever Xander Harris!"

"Heh, heh, heh…"

"Hello, ladies and gentlemen, if you've just joined our broadcast, this is William Patterson reporting live from Times Square, where an alien spacecraft has just landed here, which is the fifth time for this month alone. Now, let's get some audience reactions- Wait, the sides of the spacecraft are flickering, and….wow, they just disappeared! And- Urk! Sammy, cut the feed! Uh, ladies and gentlemen, we have a slight technical interruption, and we'll need to discuss something with our station manager… Bob! Bob! You there? Talk to me, man!"

"Yeah, Bill, what's going on? Why's the feed down? And why is my secretary drooling at her desk?"

"Lemme show you what's on the private line."

"Oh, boy."

"Yeah. Can we really put that on the air?"

"We showed that Cohen guy in his 'Borat' swimsuit during his publicity tour, didn't we? Plus, any fine the FCC gives us for a 'wardrobe malfunction' is gonna be made up by our ratings, 'cause the puddle on Ellen's desk is getting really big."

"Okay, you're the boss. But I expect a year-end bonus for keeping my face straight."

"Go get 'em, tiger."

"We're back, ladies and gentlemen, and let's go to where the spaceship was for a personal interview with She-Hulk and her, um, companion. Ms. Walters, would you like to say something?"

"Yes, I'd like to inform your viewers that we've defeated another threat to our world, and the Avengers couldn't have done it without the deeply appreciated help of this man."

"Thank you very much, She-Hulk. And, uh, sir, is there any particular reason why you're wearing nothing but a purple thong, Mr…?"

"Oh, just call me Speedo-Man."


	17. Cassandra Cain

A sleepy Xander blinked upwards into consciousness, looking at a white cloth at very close range. Yawning, he lazily lifted his left hand to his head to yank off his underwear that had migrated during their carnal acrobatics tonight to wind up covering his face. His right arm and hand were otherwise occupied, with that limb wrapped around the shoulders of the naked, just-legal-age girl pressed up against him, to firmly grip her soft breast in the palm of his right hand.

Fortunately, his recent movements hadn't fully woken Cassandra up, as instead she now happily snuggled closer in her sleep to Xander, her hands maintaining their own firm grip upon a certain part of that man's body that had joyously introduced her to full womanhood tonight, to then return to her deep slumber. Holding his breath in sudden worry that something might happen to little Xander, the man himself then softly let out a relieved sigh, as his face now stretched into a wide grin, as he chuckled in his mind, *Potential apocalypses should end like this more often.*

Last night, after the debris of the collapsed magical circle had stopped falling after taking that wizard jerk and his equally idiotic minions with it, his ally had marched up to him in her skin-tight black uniform, and then she'd started waving her hands around in sign language. While he'd come up against the reaction before of "not wanting to die a virgin", this was his first experience of some female explaining to him her strong desire of "celebrating not dying a virgin." Right after that had come several very obscene gestures, which had culminated in the silent announcement of, "I know a place."

Well, this was certainly a place, as Xander bemusedly blinked up at the rough ceiling of the cave Cassandra had taken him to, through a secret passage. It had been more than a bit odd, with all those bats hanging from the walls during everything that had then taken place. Still, they didn't seem to have been disturbed the slightest, with these night-flying mammals still gripping the walls of this underground grotto. Including one really big one right over there, hanging upside-down by its knees, its black cape dangling down towards the floor of the cave, with the cowl with its white eye-slits nearly squeezed closed in total fury directed…right…at…him…


	18. Melinda Gordon

"So, that's him?" said the dark-haired woman a bit doubtfully.

"Yeah, Xander Harris himself. Oh, don't be put off by the eyepatch. He's just a big teddy bear to women."

"That's nice to hear, especially concerning what I'm going to do to him in a minute," dryly commented Melinda. She then glanced over at the young man by her side, who was fixedly staring at the other, rugged-looking male good-humouredly escorting several teenage girls during their shopping trip through the mall, and tried another remark, this time with a strong note of disbelief in her voice, "Are you absolutely sure _this _will settle everything and allow you to go to the light?"

"Positive," firmly answered the spirit, who then advised Melinda, "Make sure you come up on his good side, and when you do it, keep him between you and the Slayers to avoid anyone making the wrong move."

"O-okay," managed Melinda past the lump in her throat, and when she started heading over towards the man and his group of young women, she felt her legs become a bit wobbly. She'd done a lot of things before to help her spirit visitors to cross over, with some of these experiences being rather dangerous, but today's event was probably the closest she'd ever come to walking into the lions' cage in the zoo and then stomping on these big cats' tails. When Melinda got closer to the group, the look she got from the teenagers simply magnified this impression of being examined by alpha predators.

Fortunately, these young women evidently dismissed as harmless the brunette female only a couple of years older than them, and they went back to teasing the one-eyed man, who was amiably receiving their sardonic remarks about his lack of taste in clothes, keeping a wide grin on his face, as he also casually glanced at the woman brushing by him. This grin then froze into a rictus of disbelief, as Xander now watched out of the corner of his eye the woman spinning in her walk to abruptly stop short and stand behind him, as her hands quickly darted to perform something unimaginable, with a resulting howl of pain from the Sunnydale survivor.

Xander had his boxers vigorously yanked upwards with all the power in Melinda's arms, giving the man a truly impressive and excruciatingly painful wedgie.

This time it was the man who whirled around, tearing his underwear out of that crazy woman's grip, and at the same time flinging out his arms to keep his Slayers with their weapons instantly produced from their clothes from lunging at that female attacker. Everyone there in the group now froze, until a wide-eyed Melinda, having taken a panicky step back, now gabbled out the message given to her by the spirit from Xander's past:

"Jesse says, 'Last tag, Xan-man!'"


	19. Maggie O'Connell

The thunderous BOOOOM! rocked the entire town, including the storefront clinic and the desk where Marilyn was seated, causing her coffee cup on top of this piece of furniture to jiggle and about to overslop its contents. Picking up her cup and taking a sip, the heavyset woman otherwise ignored the sound of falling debris outside, her attention preoccupied by what she was currently working on at her writing table.

After a few minutes, a flicker of motion caught the corner of the Tlingit's eye, as Marilyn looked up from her crossword puzzle, and placidly watched the near-naked man outside dazedly stagger down the main (and only) street of the town. As this walking wounded person lurched by the front window, Marilyn went back to her attempt to come up with a eight-letter word for 'fast cars at dead stop', first and last letters 'r', and after another minute, she triumphantly put down 'rushhour', helped along by her employer's nostalgic accounts of his life in New York City before he'd been shanghaied to this Yahweh-forsaken place.

Personally, Marilyn couldn't see the appeal. She'd spent all her life in a place where more than a car an hour passing by was cause for comment, and that seemed enough for her. Which, come to think of it, was pretty good luck for that guy who'd just lost most of his clothing, since he seemed to be having enough of a bad day without also getting in a traffic accident. Hmmmm. Maybe she should be doing something about that.

Tidily putting away her crossword, Marilyn pulled open a desk drawer and took out a sheet of paper, laying this down on the desktop, and holding her pencil ready as her eyes went down the list.

Alive: Yes, which eliminated at once two-thirds of those who'd contributed their suggestions.

Intact: Yes again, since that guy still had all his arms and legs. His eye didn't count, since it'd already been missing when he'd entered the Cicely city limits.

On Fire: Now, that one was a judgment call. It was true that victim had been trailing a cloud of smoke after himself, and his clothes had nearly been burned completely off, but he wasn't actually ablaze. Smoldering, maybe, but it wasn't the same thing. So, no for that.

Unhurriedly working her way down the list of dire things proposed to happen to a certain person, Marilyn came to the end of this catalog and after checking her totals, she underlined a name. Well, Ed would be thrilled at winning the latest pool, and he could use the eighty-four bucks. It was time for lunch, anyway, and she could drop in at the Brick and tell him the good news.

Marilyn Whirlwind then left the clinic and walked across the street, not bothering to look both ways, which meant she missed seeing the one-eyed man in his scorched underwear further along the street now having fallen down and started to desperately crawl on his hands and knees. With any luck, Dr. Joel coming back from his house call wouldn't run over him, and instead provide Maggie's latest boyfriend with whatever medical help he needed, while also taking down that guy's name for his records. Nobody in the entire town knew it, or had even bothered to remember what he called himself, since there was basically no point. Anybody who dated that female bush pilot came at once under the 'O'Connell Curse', and they wouldn't be around much longer, so why try to keep in mind anyone named Xander somebody?


	20. Emma Peel

Very early in the morning at the Cleveland Slayers House, Vi and Rona were finishing their dinner at the staff table in the kitchen. No, the name of that meal wasn't a mistake, since both were on the late-night shift and they'd completed their scheduled patrols at dawn, with these Slayers then coming back to the House and turning in their reports (a couple of vamps dusted, and they also picked up some news from a neutral demon bar that would bear discussion with the others later). The Sunnydale survivors had been looking forward to the hot meals that had been left out for them, though oddly enough, there was a missing cook in the kitchen instead of the geek they'd been expecting to find busy at his work getting breakfast ready for the other Slayers and the rest of the inhabitants of the House.

Anyway, the two Slayers had hungrily tucked into their steak dinners, and after a few more bites, they'd head to their rooms for anticipated hot showers and then falling into their beds for some serious z's. At that moment, someone rapped several times against the closed kitchen door, and a familiar but muffled voice called through the panel, "Hey, anyone in there?"

A puzzled Vi looked across the table at Rona, who was busy chewing away at her mouthful of prime beef and simply shrugged at the other Slayer, which left that woman with the task of calling out her reply, "Yeah, Xander, we're in here."

"Who's 'we'?"

That made Rona stop masticating her meal to lift her eyebrows in total confusion right at Vi, who made her own shrug towards her friend, and then tried again at the door. "Me and Rona. Why? You looking for someone?"

"Maybe. Any baby Slayers in there? Or, better yet…Andrew?" That last name had been uttered in a savage snarl, with enough menace put in his voice by Xander to make the Slayers' hair on the backs of their necks stiffen straight up.

Trading concerned glances with her fellow Slayer, Rona swallowed her food, while afterwards muttering under her breath at Vi, "Wonder what Captain Dork did _now_?", and then she reached out for her water glass.

Exasperatedly rolling her eyes in agreement, Vi once more raised her voice, "There's nobody in here but us, Xander. What's going-"

The bang! of the kitchen door being flung open to slam against the wall interrupted her, but Vi wouldn't have been able to complete her question anyway, due to that Slayer's jaw instantly dropping in shock, leaving her mouth wide open, along with the fork she'd been holding in her right hand being snapped in two due to the superhuman woman abruptly clenching her fist.

Rona had the bad luck of being in the middle of a swallow from her glass, so she then performed a championship spit-take across nearly the whole width of the kitchen.

Ignoring all this, Xander Harris, having finished his irate stalk into the room, continued his stiff and angry posture in front of the kitchen drawers, as he pulled out of these a box of cereal, a bowl, a spoon, and then from the refrigerator, a gallon of milk. As he prepared his breakfast, the man kept his back turned to the other two women, both who were now gaping at what they were seeing, something either had never thought they'd ever have the chance for in their lifetimes.

Still, when Xander made his first vicious stab with his spoon into his filled bowl, Vi managed a tentative, "Ahhhhh…?" Hopefully, this would signal to that furious man that a little information about what was going on wouldn't be taken amiss by the Slayers, and it also wouldn't cause him to promptly spin around and hurl his breakfast right at their heads.

The man standing there in the kitchen stiffened, and both Vi and Rona then heard his teeth grinding together for a few moments. Finally, in a choked voice, there came from Xander still keeping his back to them, the incomprehensible words of, "The Avengers, season four, episode twenty-one, the classic moment, and I was right there, next to her, only this time it was in ANDREW'S WISHED-FOR VERSION!"

As he roared those last words through his leather facemask, Xander, holding his bowl in his left hand, now used his right hand to rip off his full mask with the menacing eye-slits and sewn lips and threw it down hard to the floor, and the nearly-naked man then spun around to hop back and upwards onto the kitchen counter.

Wincing as the cold tile surface met his exposed buttocks through his bottomless leather chaps, Xander shifted his face into a deadly glare directed right at the frozen Slayers, as he leaned forward while cramming a heaping spoonful of his Frosted Flakes into his mouth, which caused his nipple clamps' chains to dangle loosely in their curve along to where they were connected to the ringed zipper tab of his groin-pouch.


	21. Allison DuBois

Thrown backwards through the shoved-open warehouse rear exit door, Xander tripped and then the man tumbled head-over-heels down the concrete stairs at the side of the building's loading dock, managing a blistering expletive for every single step he bounced along during his descent towards the hard alley asphalt below. Slamming onto his back at the end of his short but painful journey, an irate Xander snarled a wordless growl upwards into the Phoenix night sky dimly seen through the space above the alley, between the roof edges of the warehouses he currently had on both sides of himself.

Scrambling up onto his feet, a bruised Xander lifted his battleaxe he'd managed to keep from losing or slicing himself to ribbons during his fall, and the man charged forward to the steps, only to skid to an abrupt halt and look down at his lower body. There, his pants and boxers were a total ruin, shredded and torn beyond repair into dangling strips of cloth by the claws of the Kor'zlan demon he'd been fighting a moment ago before a backhand blow had sent him reeling out of the warehouse.

Grimacing his displeasure at having to delay to do this, Xander took his right hand off the haft of his axe to clap these fingers against the waistbands of his lower clothing, gripping, and then yanking as hard as he could, all in one smooth movement that ripped off all the tattered remnants of his jeans and underwear, culminating in him tossing the ruined scraps of his clothes against the warehouse wall on his right, with these then falling to the ground and becoming just more litter added to the other rubbish there in the alley.

An exasperated roll of Xander's remaining eye ended in a quick check of all the exposed flesh between the bottom of his shirt and the tops of his boots. Despite his slashed and discarded garments, there were only a few scratches on his legs, so he could now be sure that nothing would trip him up when a bare-assed Xander rejoined the noisy fight taking place right now in the warehouse he'd just left, among a bunch of demons and the trio of Slayers that were currently in the Watcher's charge.

At times like these, modesty could be ignored, even though the man with the eyepatch glumly knew that Sophia, Marie, and Miri would gleefully spread the story worldwide among the entire Council, including the remaining Scoobies. All it'd take to top things off tonight would be for a cop to materialize in the alley and arrest him for indecent exposure; though, at least since his Slayers were past the legal age, he couldn't be charged with corrupting a minor-

In the narrow passageway behind Xander, somebody politely cleared their throat.

At once spinning around while hurriedly bringing up his axe in a blurring sweep that had it prepared for attack or defense, whichever seemed necessary right now in the coming battle with his newest foe, Xander ended up with his weapon on guard, ready for instant use against….

A soccer mom?

Standing calmly in the middle of the alley a few steps from him, a blonde woman in her late thirties or early forties, dressed in a casual blouse, pants, and tennis shoes, and holding a bundle in her hands, was now gazing over her burden at him, ignoring totally the deadly axe pointed right at her, to instead steadily stare at-

Xander's axe blurred again in an immediate shift of his weapon that ended up this time with his hands grasping the top of the vertical haft, with the horizontal axeblades held directly in front of a certain part of his body a couple of inches below his navel.

At this, the woman's eyebrows faintly lifted in bemusement, but she didn't say a word, with instead that female now giving Xander a very direct mom-look that firmly suggested she would really like some kind of explanation. About everything.

"Ahhhh…," tentatively started Xander, as he desperately tried to think of a fairly believable excuse, to then start the best lie he could actually come up with right at this moment, which was the following: "Me and my friends there in the warehouse, we're, uh, running a totally realistic Dungeons and Dragons game, so, uh, we have to act out our player characters-"

Through the warehouse walls behind both of the two people in the alley, muffled but comprehensible enough, came the sound of a young woman shrieking with absolute rage at the top of her lungs, "YOU DEMON JERK, I'LL NEVER GET THIS STAIN OUT! DIE! DIE! DIE!"

"-and some of us get into it maybe a teensy bit too much," morosely finished Xander, giving his listener a wan smile that literally begged for mercy.

For the first time since she'd appeared in the alley, the woman spoke, uttering an extremely sarcastic, "Whatever." At the same time, she stepped forward and lifted her arms, offering to the man what she'd been carrying. Without thinking about it, a startled Xander took away his left hand from its grip on his axe and took from the woman her cloth bundle, all while still cautiously holding his weapon absolutely immobile in its current position with his other hand. As he looked down at what he was now holding, Xander's jaw dropped open in shock, as he recognized a single set of boxer underwear and a pair of sweatpants in a man's size.

A dazed Xander now glanced up, to see the woman had turned around and was walking away, down the alley to the street beyond. "Hey-!" began the man, only to be shortly interrupted in his call.

Continuing her walk and not looking back, the woman said in a firm voice, "Allison; I've already got a job; plus I have to fix dinner for Joe and the kids; when you're at Pancho's Restaurant, get in the furthest left line at the counter because it'll be the fastest and your Slayers will be really cranky; and yes, you've got enough money for the triple Mucho Grande Taco platter." At those last words, the woman stepped out of the alley and turned right, disappearing past the warehouse corner with a farewell wave of her right hand.

A few moments later, after leaning his axe against the warehouse wall, Xander was frantically hopping around the alley while pulling on his new, perfectly fitting underwear and pants past his footwear and up his legs, urged on by the angry yelling of another young woman somewhere in the warehouse: "SO YOU'RE THE ONE WHO TOOK MY FAVORITE SWORD WITHOUT TELLING ME! GIMME THAT!"

Finally getting dressed and then grabbing his axe, Xander rushed up the steps and threw open the warehouse door, hoping to finish off things before the girls got really mad at each other, which was why when the man dashed into the storage building, he was shouting his latest war cry, "Dinner's on me, ladies!"


	22. Marge Simpson

Sitting comfortably at the kitchen table, Marge Simpson drank her morning coffee and read today's newspaper, enjoying the quiet of the house. Maggie was in her high chair placidly sucking on her pacifier, Homer was at work, the other children were at school, and a nearly-naked man dressed solely in his soaked underwear had just run into the kitchen through the tv room, having entered this by the backyard door, to then spin around, hastily dropping into a crouch to huddle in the corner between the dishwasher and the lower cabinets, hopefully out of sight of anybody outside looking through the kitchen window.

At the same time, a rampaging mob passed down the street in front of the house. Marge paid no attention to this. After all, rampaging mobs occurred in Springfield at least three times a week, though never on trash day.

Instead, she sternly reproved the young man with an eyepatch and dripping on her just-waxed kitchen floor, "Excuse me, but why are you in my house, why are you holding a very large double-bladed axe, and could you please stay on the floor mat?"

"What?" blurted out the drenched man still gripping his massive weapon as if he was expecting to defend himself at any moment, with his attention now diverted from the baying of the mob outside to gape at the woman with a really strange hairstyle presently glowering at him. Maybe the hairstyle was glowering at him, too. You could never tell with blue hair. His face suddenly brightened in hope, he continued, "Look, lady, could you just hide me for a while? I promise I won't be any trouble, and I'll sneak out of here when I can!"

"You still haven't said why you're here in the first place," sensibly pointed out Marge.

"I DON'T KNOW!" yelled the one-eyed man. Continuing at a slightly lower volume due to Marge's disapproving look, he attempted to explain, "Listen, it all happened when I stopped for gas while passing through town. After I finished, I went into the convenience store to pay and also pick up some Twinkies, when all of sudden, I got blasted by dozen of bright lights. When I could see again-" The man broke off, shuddering, as his face now showed absolute terror. "The most horrifying creature I've ever encountered in my whole life was right in front of me, and then it doused me with some kind of vile fluid from a blasphemous container! Well, I defended myself with Junior here-" the man brandished his axe at those last words, "-but instead of anybody feeling grateful because I protected them against that monster, they all went berserk and started chasing me, with more people joining in! I was only able to throw them off my trail by stripping and using those wet clothes as decoys! Now, will you please let me stay?"

The sad part that it wasn't even the strangest thing that had happened to her for this month alone, glumly reflected Mage. That doleful mood was presented in the slow shaking of her head, as the mother pointed out to her intruder, "I'm afraid not. My husband will be coming home soon, and my children, too. But….wait a second!" Marge brightened up, anxiously watched by the young man seated in his growing puddle. "My sisters live nearby, and I'm sure that if I ask them, they'll be happy to have a guest over. Is that all right with you?" She looked inquiringly at the other adult sitting on the floor.

"Uh, yeah, thanks a lot!" replied a relieved Xander Harris, who then twisted his body to warily peek over the bottom edge of the kitchen window for any sign of his pursuers. While he was occupied by this, Marge left the kitchen, casually gathering up Maggie from her chair along the way, and went to the living room phone.

After dialing, and then hearing a very familiar voice, Marge said, "Selma, I need a favor- What?" She brought the receiver to her face for a moment to stare at it in absolute disbelief, before putting it to her ear again, to say just a trifle sharply, "NO, I haven't killed Homer and need your help to get rid of the body!" After a few moments' pause, she snapped again, "You both don't have to make those disappointed sighs!"

Held in her mother's left arm, Maggie thoughtfully sucked on her pacifier several times.

Shaking her head in exasperation, Marge tried again, "Listen, a young man came into my house, and he needs a place to stay for a few hours. I told him I'd ask- What?" A look of confusion now appeared on the woman's face. "Oh, I'd say in his mid to late twenties, no missing limbs - well, he's got an eyepatch - no, he didn't say how he lost it, yes, he's in very good health. Yes, I'm positive! Because he's in my kitchen in just his underwear, that's why! Hello? Hello?"

Marge Simpson stared at the now-silent phone in her hand with utter perplexity, only to be suddenly distracted by the front door slamming open to frame her son standing in the doorway, a terrible expression upon his young face. Staring at Bart, Marge inquired, "Honey, why aren't you in school?"

"SCHOOL?" shouted Bart in absolute disbelief, gawking at his mother, to then go back to his grim look of a moment ago when he growled, "The whole school was let out today, so we could help look for the guy who did the worse thing that's ever happened here!"

Marge lifted an eyebrow.

"Besides me," said Bart a little sheepishly, before he became serious again, looking his mother right in the eye, as her child passed on the horrible news: "Krusty the Clown's been murdered!"

"Good heavens! What happened?" asked the alarmed woman.

"Krusty was at the Kwik-E-Mart today to present the lucky millionth visitor with their winning ticket for a lifetime supply of Squishees, and a guy came in who won! All the press guys there took his picture, flashbulbs popping away, and then Krusty sprayed him with his trusty seltzer bottle!" Bart sadly shook his head, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, as he went on telling his fascinated mother, "I just know that's the way Krusty would've wanted to go, even when the guy took out a big axe from under his jacket and chopped his head off! That jerkface then ran away, but he won't get far! We'll make sure of that!" Bart glowered off in the distance as the young boy contemplated what his fellow schoolmates would do to the killer of their favorite entertainer.

Marge was about to reprove her child about his naughty language, until she had another thought, to be then asked, "What about Krusty?"

"Oh, Doctor Hibbert was there, getting a dozen cartons of cigarettes for his wife. He said that after sewing Krusty's head back on and doing some experiments forbidden by the AMA, he'll be as good as new," beamed Bart. The boy's good mood didn't last long, as he vowed under his breath, "This insult shall be avenged!" After saying that, Bart then dashed past his mother and up the stairs to his room.

Marge Simpson just stood there, putting a couple of things together, until a tremendous crash back in the house, accompanied by a man's despairing scream abruptly muffled into silence made her jump straight up in absolute fright, and when she came down, the woman in her panic hugged to herself Maggie, the phone, and the lamp resting on the phone cabinet.

Still laden with her burdens, an immobile Marge watched as Bart now thundered down the stairs, waving a morning-star around his head, all while ignoring his mother, to then throw open the front door and bawl to the rampaging mob in the street that had doubled back, "DEATH! DEATH! DEATH TO KRUSTY'S SLAYER!"

As the mob roared its agreement, Bart dashed outside, slamming the door behind himself in the middle of his mother calling after, "Honey, be home before dark!"

A few moments later, warily holding Maggie on her hip while noting the shattered back door of the tv room, Marge Simpson peeked into her kitchen, noticing the drag marks of someone's heels on that room's floor, the desperate scrapes caused by fingernails hopelessly clawing upon the kitchen cabinets during a failed attempt to prevent their owner's unexpected departure towards an awful doom, and the faint but lingering odor of Selma and Patty's cigarettes hanging in the air of the kitchen.

Sighing, Marge returned Maggie to her high chair, and then that child's mother sank back into her own chair at the kitchen table, and once more sipped her cup of coffee. It was still warm.

Maggie pensively chewed upon her pacifier a few times, and then the baby burped.

Which pretty much expressed it all.


	23. The Crossovers

1. Sally Solomon

Crossover: 3rd Rock From The Sun (1996-2001)

Author's Notes: This tv series had a reluctant quartet of aliens from outer space assigned by the Big Giant Head (don't ask) to land upon a certain planet, shift from their original forms (a big purple tube, basically) into the bodies of the dominant species of that world, and then dwell among them while checking for signs of civilization (highly doubtful). During their transformation into people living in an American Midwest college town, the hard-as-nails Security Officer wound up becoming an extremely sexy female and taking on the name of Sally Solomon of the Solomon family (they saw the name on a passing delivery truck). Later, when she complained about why she had to be the woman, a very short answer was given to her by the leader of their group: "Because you lost."

The concept of this ficlet was taken from an actual episode, when Sally sees outside their house her first snowfall ever, notices the deserted streets, and jumps to a hasty conclusion that humanity is now virtually extinct due to a natural disaster, and it's up to her to fill the world again with its inhabitants. How, exactly, will be figured out later, as she then grabs the first passer-by and takes him up to her bedroom, which is about as far as it got in the tv show. In the Buffyverse, Xander Harris is a bemused but very willing participant, who afterwards makes the mistake of explaining to Sally exactly what a snowstorm is, and why there's nothing to be concerned about. She wasn't very happy to hear that and Sally then strongly expressed her displeasure to him, just before she ejected him from the house.

* * *

2. Marie D'Ancanto

Crossover: X-Men movies (2000, etc.)

Author's Note: The mutant known as Rogue has a lot of problems in her life: being considered a dangerous subhuman by normal people, an overzealous older guy living in their home who considers himself her protector, and having superpowers that allow the young woman with the first name of Marie to suck out the life, knowledge, and abilities of anybody she even lays a finger upon. Which doesn't do a _thing_ for her attempts to get some. An imagination and a pulsating plastic cylinder ordered through the mail can only do so much, so a cautious meeting was set up at the local motel with someone who indicated he was prepared to be broadminded.

It really wasn't her date's fault that she'd gotten the cheap, easily-torn gloves. However, Marie certainly didn't feel like blaming herself, so she threw him out, called up room service for a gallon of Ben and Jerry's finest, and turned the television to the Lifetime Channel in preparation for a good cry.

Elsewhere in the motel corridors, Xander was running for his life, while being chased by a berserk guy yelling at him for taking advantage of a sweet, innocent girl and getting closer with those claws of his. The one-eyed man put down his head and tried to find a little bit more speed in his legs, not knowing he was being chased by Logan (last name unknown, even to that guy), another mutant with the code name of Wolverine and having powers of heightened senses, super-fast healing, and a really nasty personality from having his entire skeleton coated with an amazingly durable metal known as adamantium, with also the addition of three unbelievingly sharp blades of this material inside each of his forearms that could pop out of his hands whenever he willed it. Which hurt. A lot.

Okay, so maybe it made a really cool sound doing that, which Logan was thinking about copyrighting.

If a fleeing Xander Harris had learned of this and he could think of a way to do it safely, that Sunnydale survivor would have surely snarked to the guy with the weird hairstyle that he'd been exceedingly lucky things hadn't been derisively arranged so that every time he showed off his claws, the tune of 'Pop Goes The Weasel' would have jauntily played.

* * *

3. Princess Fiona

Crossover: Shrek and sequels (2001-on)

Sometime during this animated movie, Xander finds himself in the fairy-tale land of Far, Far Away, where all the inhabitants of those bedtime stories _do_ exist, albeit in a much more realistic and grittier manner. It winds up with him catching the eye of the beautiful princess living in a castle and then getting invited into her bedroom - look, it's a fantasy, all right?

In any case, considering his past that had such things as a praying mantis teacher and a life-sucking Incan mummy, it's no wonder why that man didn't bat an eye at seeing his potential bedmate revealing her closely-guarded secret exactly at sunset. Namely, that Princess Fiona transforms every night from a gorgeous human woman into a green-skinned, taller-than-him, seriously-muscled ogress.

Hey, he still thought she looked cute, and Xander was quite happy to tell her that. It was simply the major growling of his stomach at that specific moment which made him broach the subject in such an inadvertently insulting way, about comparing her emerald complexion to a creamy mixture of avocados mashed or puréed with tomatoes and lightly spiced with chilies.

* * *

4. An Unseen Presence

Crossover: Stephen King's The Shining (1977 book and 1980 movie)

Author's Note: All information needed for this ficlet is presented in my prequel story "A Hotel Is Not A Home" presented elsewhere here.

* * *

5. Gabrielle

Crossover: Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001)

Author's Note: That tv series is named after the main character, a barbarian warrior woman in all her leather-clad glory, with the toned legs, the impressive bust, and the wild grin on her face as she leaps and tumbles around the set, beating up her mostly-male opponents, and also on some very appreciated episodes, going head-to-head against similarly scantily-dressed female foes-

(Ahem. Just let me wipe off the drool on my keyboard.)

Anyway, Gabrielle is Xena's buddy, sidekick, companion, whatever, and during her spare time of writing down the tales of their exploits, that younger blonde woman also learned a few moves from her friend. (Make whatever you like of that, since there's no confirmation of anything else whatsoever that may have occurred between the pair. Nuh-huh. Vile rumors, I tell you. At least for now.)

Which might have been why, on a break from being with the brunette brawler, Gabrielle saw across a tavern room a lonely-looking guy with one eye, who seemed a bit lost, looked nice, and was certainly cleaner than the rest of the bar's clientele. So, a few minutes later, a sudden decision to impress her partner (hey, we've all done that, just not like her) resulted in _him_ performing some unexpected acrobatics that resulted in an extremely grumpy Xander afterwards making the acquaintance of a dozen buckets filled with very cold water.

* * *

6. Minerva McGonagall

Crossover: The Harry Potter novels (1997-2007)

Author's Notes: In the books, Minerva McGonagall is a prim and proper witch in her early seventies (late middle age for women with magic in the wizarding world), who sternly goes around in her work as Assistant Headmistress of Hogwarts, the mystical castle in Scotland where those children from Great Britain and other countries beginning to manifest their unique abilities are taught how to control and manage magic via their wands.

I decided to do a Harry Potter story and have Xander wander into Hogsmeade, the small village of wizards and witches near the castle. Ordinarily, the township has spells to keep Muggles (non-magical humans) from entering or even noticing the place, but considering that Xander's a Sunnydale native, born and raised on the Hellmouth, plus with that man getting hit by various curses, hexes, and enchantments every other week or so during his high school years in that demon-haunted California city, he probably just strolled right through the wards around the rural community without even knowing they were there.

It was also undoubtedly why nobody there paid any attention to the man dressed in jeans and a pullover while everyone else was wearing their wizarding robes (Xander decided not to ask, since there was surely some kind of good reason for it, and he was tired of being regarded as a "bluidy daft Yank".). So, it's the pub for him, with the chance of something to eat and drink, and MY GOD, LOOK AT THOSE TITS!

He might have hooked up in the first place with Madam Rosmerta, the owner of the Three Broomsticks pub, except I wanted Xander to visit Hogwarts, and the easiest way to do that was to have someone from there bring him to the school. There weren't all that many females in the castle for that possibility, and as I mulled over those characters, I thought it'd be hilarious to use Minerva McGonagall. Look, that woman can change herself into a cat. She must have other hidden depths, among them a strong desire to occasionally cut loose and thoroughly enjoy herself.

Hence, the use of Polyjuice, when a single hair from the person whose body you want to transform yourself into is placed into this potion and then that magical concoction is drunk, with the subsequent change in appearance taking place right after. People with strict principles, such as Minerva, wouldn't do this without the express permission of the donor of their hair, not to mention Rosmerta's own willingness in allowing a rarely-seen barmaid to size up her customers while this supremely endowed young witch was mentally rating them as potential bed partners.

Notwithstanding the fact that Minerva's female friends surely broke into gales of laughter when that woman hesitantly broached her desire to them, they next gleefully agreed to go along with everything in the spirit of feminine solidarity. As long as she told them _all_ the details.

Which shortly afterwards included a thorough description of a truly fine shag by a young man who certainly knew what he was doing. Furthermore, that dashing one-eyed Council member also possessed the admirable trait of knowing when to keep his mouth totally shut, despite being simultaneously sneered at and twinkled towards by two interfering male busybodies, who had no business poking around in others' private affairs.

* * *

7. Princess Leia

Crossover: *Sigh* Do you REALLY need this? Oh, all right: Star Wars (1977)

Author's Note: There's a site called with a hilarious section titled "Movie-A-Minute" with ultra (and I mean ULTRA) condensed synopses of films. Case in point, the following, with these the property of their original owners:

The Empire Strikes Back

Luke: I have to go to Dagobah.  
Yoda: You have to use the force.  
Luke: I have to go to Cloud City.  
Darth Vader: You have to go to the dark side.  
Luke: No I don't.  
Darth Vader: I'm your father.  
Luke: No you're not.  
Darth Vader: Fine, I'll cut off your hand.

THE END

Not to mention the last of the trilogy:

Return of the Jedi

Darth Vader: Luke, come to the dark side.  
Luke: No.  
Darth Vader: Your goodness has redeemed me. Die, emperor scum.

THE END

Oddly enough, nobody's yet done the first movie, so here's my version that led to my ficlet:

Star Wars

Darth Vader: Princess, I have tortured you and I blew up your home planet. Surely, that must have broken you.  
Princess Leia: This tight white dress really makes my boobies bounce, doesn't it?  
Darth Vader: I need a drink.

THE END

* * *

8. Zatanna Zatara

Crossover: DC Comics Universe

Author's Note: Presented in the ficlet as the classic DC character as created in the 1960's, ignoring all the mind-wiping controversy. Zatanna is the beautiful daughter of a real-life magician, and she has her own personal mystic powers that can accomplish whatever she wants, as long as she says her commands backwards. "Turn on the light" becomes "Thgil eht no nrut." (I wonder what would take place if she spoke out loud a palindrome. Does nothing at all happen, or is there a risk of the entire universe exploding?)

As her cover identity, Zatanna works as a stage illusionist, pretending her magic is just trickery, all while dressed up in her costume of a black top hat, a white bow tie, a tuxedo jacket, a very low-cut white dress shirt attached to black tights, black fishnet stockings, and black high heels. Oh, and black fishnet stockings. Um, did I already say that? Anyway, Xander is happy about his new girlfriend, until it comes to pass those few special days of the month when she's really cranky, causing him to break out in a cold sweat every time she opens her mouth.

* * *

9. Duchess Gloriana XIV

Crossovers: Duck Soup (1933 movie by Paramount Pictures) and The Mouse That Roared (the Leonard Wibberley 1955 novel of an imaginary European country known as Grand Fenwick).

Author's Note: I first thought up Xander dressed up in that old-fashioned bedtime outfit and carrying out the mirror routine from the movie with his unknown challenger. Then I had to think up of how he got there. Well, the film was set in the invented 1930's country of Fredonia, but I wanted to put Xander somewhere else in the present day, so that led to him staying in the Buffyverse version of a much smaller and more peaceful Grand Fenwick. In the Wibberley novel and in other books, that Northern Alps country got into numerous zany incidents, starting with that tiny nation declaring war on the United States (they were dead broke, and figured that once they'd lost, their victor would pour in money and other aid to rebuild the economy. Hey, it worked for Germany after WWII with the Marshall Plan. Except in a series of unbelievable events, Grand Fenwick stole from their foe the ultimate weapon called the Q-Bomb. Which means, they won. _Now_ what?).

The leader of that absurd country in the novels was a young woman named Duchess Gloriana XII. Apparently they like that name, so it was inevitable that Xander would meet and charm her currently-ruling granddaughter, Duchess Gloriana XIV.

* * *

10. Mary Batson

Crossover: Originally 1940's Fawcett Comics, now owned by DC Comics, and if you care, she's the pre-1985 version with the white costume.

Author's Note: Mary Batson is the twin sister of Billy Batson. Both were given vast powers by the wizard known as Shazam, and by speaking his name, the pair can transform themselves into superheroes with immense strength, speed, stamina, and other abilities. Billy changes from a teenage boy into a full-grown adult known as Captain Marvel in his red/gold leotard and the white cape, while the eighteen-year-old Mary Batson maintains her original appearance as Mary Marvel in her white and gold costume. One weakness for both of these costumed characters is that they need to say the name "Shazam!" to acquire their powers and defeat their foes, so they have to be ready to yell that odd word at any instant. Including the most inappropriate times.

A further complication is that their transformation occurs due to being hit by a mystical bolt of lightning sent to them by the wizard after hearing his name, which even if it's not as deadly as the natural version of that stupendous atmospheric discharge of electricity, anyone else close (make that _very_ close) to that person who'd just ecstatically whooped something bizarre at the top of her lungs is not going to turn out to be all that thrilled. Such as one Xander Harris, whose teeth are now brightly glowing.

* * *

11. Anita Blake

Crossover: The Anita Blake novels (1993-present)

Author's Note: Any required information for this ficlet is presented in my story "Help! I'm Being Held Prisoner In The Anitaverse!" presented elsewhere here.

* * *

12. Nyota Uhura

Crossover: Another *sigh*. Star Trek - The Original Series (1966-1969), if you _must_ know.

Author's Note: For all the indignant mutters by feminists over those tight miniskirts worn by the female crewmembers during this sixties science fiction show, including Nyota Uhura, chief communications officer of the starship Enterprise, it's the guys on that tv series who should be complaining. After all, that gorgeous black woman can wear her red dress in perfect safety and survive not only throughout the entire show but also the following movies, but if any lower ranking crewman wears that specific color anywhere on his body, there's a 99% or better chance he won't live past the first commercial break. How come no redshirt character ever proposed a mutiny, or at least another freakin' shade or tint for their clothes?

The "tribble" is from that classic episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", which presents these creatures as a featureless globe of fur that happily purrs around its owner, doesn't make any kind of mess, and whose only drawback is that they're born pregnant. Which means if you feed them too much, they'll breed like…well, tribbles. In that installment, Uhura is shown as having one of those critters as a pet, and there's nothing ever said that she gave the little furball up, so I wrote it in the ficlet.

* * *

13. Murphy Brown

Crossover: Murphy Brown (1988-1998)

Author's Note: In this tv series named after the main character, Murphy is a recovering alcoholic and ex-smoker who's very good at her newswoman and investigative reporter work. Her personal life could use some improvement, what with her abrasive personality and obsessive need for control, but she manages to stay relatively sane, compared to her friends at work who carpool together, including her fellow reporter Frank Fontana, stuffy anchor Jim Dial, and ditzy Corky Sherwood scheming to take Murphy's place on their television newsmagazine. In her exhaustive pursuit of the next story, Murphy goes through personal secretaries like she used to go through cigarettes, burning them down to the merest stub and tossing them to the ground, to then be viciously stubbed out under a spiked heel. This has led to the desperate office pool sending her those eccentric people who can't find anyone else to hire them. Murphy doesn't care; as long as they can do the job and don't touch her Emmys, she'll load them up with a staggering workload and yell at them like she does everyone else.

* * *

14. Polly Sherman

Crossover: Fawlty Towers (1975)

Author's Note: Basil Fawlty is the proud owner and manager of the modestly named Fawlty Towers in fair Torquay, and his life would be absolutely perfect if it wasn't for little things like guests. And staff. And his wife. And everyone else in the entire world who insists upon inconveniencing this Englishman. What makes it even more irritating is that nobody pays any attention whatsoever to that short-fused man about to have a nervous breakdown at any moment.

That strange man in the eyepatch had looked most suspicious to Basil right from the get-go, and it didn't help at all that he was a foreigner. A bally colonial from those jumped-up people across the pond. Naturally, Mr. Harris (Ah-hah! Much more imaginative than Smith or Jones, but this bears watching.) had no idea whatsoever of proper manners, coming in and out of _his_ hotel at all times of the day and night, like he had a perfect right to do such a thing. Well, enough of this. He was going up to that bloke's room and give him a piece of his mind. Now, where was Polly to take over the desk? Blast that girl! She never seemed to be around when needed!

Five minutes later, just as Xander had dragged by his ankles an unconscious Basil out into the hotel corridor, the irritated American heard from behind himself a puzzled, "¿Qué?"

"Oh, great," groaned Xander to himself, as he dropped to the floor the limp legs of the guy he'd just punched out, and started to turn to face whoever had said that.

*Okay, hopefully they know what this guy's like and they'll give me a medal for thumping him.*

* * *

15. Mother

Crossover: Psycho (novel by Robert Bloch and film by Alfred Hitchcock, with music by Bernard Herrmann)

Author's Note: If you like creepy lodging places, the Bates Motel has to be in the top ten. The Buffyverse location got even spookier when Xander Harris and Norman Bates met each other, with accompanying surprises for the duo. Norman got to see actual magic, an experience that undoubtedly didn't do a thing for his fragile mental state, and Xander was forced to witness at close range a guy dressed up in a elderly woman's dress and wearing a white wig, all as a result of that man assuming his dead mother's personality.

* * *

16. Jennifer Walters

Crossover: Marvel Comics Universe

Author's Note: Bruce Banner once provided a blood transfusion for his cousin Jennifer Walters, which also accidentally transferred a portion of his Hulk powers to her, winding up with that woman growing taller, gaining a hundred pounds of sheer muscle, and having her hair and skin turn bright green. Incredibly enough, Jennifer actually liked what she'd become, glorying in her strength and durability. It didn't hurt at all that she was now a truly smokin' babe, happily dubbing herself 'She-Hulk'.

This cheerful mood has lasted throughout that green woman's superhero career. Unlike others of their community, Jennifer declines to wallow in angst, instead possessing an actual sense of humor and enjoying whatever zaniness occurs in her life. Case in point: A team-up with a brave one-eyed man ends up with him stark naked and enduring a seven-foot-tall emerald female having an attack of the giggles, until she solved his ludicrous dilemma with an offer he couldn't think of any way to least Xander remembered to turn inside out her thong before he wore it.

* * *

17. Cassandra Cain

Crossover: DC Comics universe, namely the Batman family.

Author's Note: This young woman is another example of a comics character created with an interesting premise, only to fall into the hands of writers who can't think of anything else to do with her except to basically screw up her life. If anybody needs to be retconned, it's Cassandra. The daughter of assassins, a little girl was brought up to never speak at all, instead putting all her efforts into learning multiple martial arts to effortlessly kill her targets, only to learn, after her first victim died at her hands when she was just eight years old, about how final death really is. She ran away and lived her mute life on her own for nearly a decade, eventually meeting the Batman in Gotham City, who agreed to bring her under his wing after learning Cassandra's desperate seeking for atonement for her acts. A short time later, Cassandra became the second Batgirl, which is when she meets Xander Harris during his battle against an evil wizard and uses her enhanced abilities to read his body language, finding out he's a genuinely kind and caring man. He'll do for her first.

* * *

18. Melinda Gordon

Crossover: The Ghost Whisperer (2005-2010)

Author's Notes: Ever since she was a little girl, Melinda can talk to the dead, and as she grew up, the young woman tried to help these ghosts accomplish whatever purpose that's keeping them from going onto their rest. She expected the usual thing from the latest spirit to visit her, who looked like he hadn't survived high school, such as a last conversation with his parents, or some sort of reunion with a girlfriend who'd outlived him (assuming he ever had one; this teenager still maintained a certain geeky personality despite being deceased, which during his earlier life wouldn't have been all that attractive to his female classmates).

Melinda had been too polite to mention her feelings about that right from the start, and when the ghost explained exactly what needed to be done during their encounter with a certain man, at that point she was really taken aback.

"You want me to do WHAT? Why on earth should I?"

"If you agree, I'll tell you about a bunch of people who can help you. They won't think you're nuts if you talk to them, and afterwards, the Scoobies, or what's left of them, can give you some honest advice and lend a hand when you really need it. But, I can't contact them directly. They've had some nasty experiences with, um, the unliving, and Xan and the rest of the guys will exorcise me in a second if I ever show my face around them. Which is why I came up with this, to finally tell my best friend I forgive him. When he thinks it over, he'll buy it, 'cause it's something only I would do…well, he'd do it to me, if it was the other way around."

"If you say so. All…right, I'll do it, if I'm sure I won't get hurt."

"Hey, Xan wouldn't ever hurt a girl if he could possibly help it. The only thing you need to watch out for are the Slayers."

"What's that?"

"Huh. I never thought after so many times hearing it, that I'd ever be the one to deliver it… Okay, here goes: 'The world is older than you know-'".

* * *

19. Maggie O'Connell

Crossover: Northern Exposure (1990-1995)

Author's Notes: In this tv series' first episode, newly-created Doctor Joel Fleischman, who thinks of himself as both a Jew and a native New Yorker in equal measure, is glumly contemplating having to pay off his student loans by working for the state of Alaska for the next couple of years. Until, to his horror, he learns that rather than being a physician in Anchorage, which is at least some kind of city, his job contract was brought up by Maurice Minnifield, a former NASA astronaut, who's decided his current address of Cicely ("The Alaskan Riveria") should have a doctor of its very own.

Joel's dejection over his current travails only deepens when he then finds himself in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it small town waaaay out in the Alaskan wilderness that's home to just a couple of hundred people, each and every one of them some kind of oddball or weird character.

Among them:

Marilyn Whirlwind, a Native American who somehow appointed herself his secretary without the young doctor having any kind of say about the entire matter.

Ed Chigliak, a cheerful guy Joel's age obsessed with film and yearning for Hollywood.

Holling Vincoeur, owner of the Brick, the local bar, who maintains he's middle aged despite being in his late sixties ("Vincoeurs have the tendency to live past a hundred and twenty.") Considering he's married to a pretty girl almost fifty years younger than him and has no trouble keeping up with her in bed, that man just might be right.

During his continual scheming to somehow get out of his contract and return to New York City, Joel is distracted only by the eye-catching, very stubborn Maggie O'Connell, a gorgeous young woman who runs the local plane service. Standoffish and regarding the new doctor with a mixture of dry amusement and idle contempt, Maggie insists to everyone that her series of departed boyfriends, who all managed to perish in truly bizarre ways (one got hit directly by a falling satellite), is something that could have happened to anyone, so quit spreading around the town such stupid rumors as the "O'Connell Curse."

Nevertheless, when that female bush pilot dates a new guy, a man with one eye and a story of taking a few weeks off from his job as a handyman at a private school for scholarship girls, the entire community puts down their money on how long he'll last, and how much it'll hurt.

* * *

20. Emma Peel

Crossover: The Avengers (1961 - 1969)

Author's Note: Yes, it's the very same "A Touch Of Brimstone" episode where Diana Rigg comes out in her dominatrix outfit with the spiked collar and the live snake, which caused millions of male adolescents in Britain and America back in the sixties declare to themselves, "Today, I am a man!"

It looks like Andrew had his own take on that memorable installment of the series.

* * *

21. Allison DuBois (fictional character, not the one in real life)

Crossover: Medium (2005-present)

Author's Note: In her sleep, a woman has dreams and visions of events happening in the past, present, and future. These range from being absolutely accurate and understandable to having the strong possibility of error when trying to figure out vague and obscure clues shown by her extraordinary gift. It only increases the pressure for Allison DuBois when she knows her forecasting ability might be the only thing to prevent a murderer or some other evil person from succeeding in their wrongdoing.

At the same time, Allison has to juggle a personal life that includes a husband who knows and accepts her talent, and her trio of daughters, all who inherited this same ability.


End file.
